The Smoke That Thunders…

We were up early, showered before the mad rush from the other guests, and then got the kitchen staff to make us breakfast before the usual time, which took some doing….and a 1000 Kwacha note to smooth the negotiation process…. It had drizzled throughout the night, but that morning the sky was clear and we decided to make the trip to the Victoria Falls to take advantage of the weather…

The 12 kilometre ride to the falls was ridden at a slow pace, taking in our surroundings… A car had gone off the road on a sharp bend sometime during the night, and it had travelled about 50 metres into the bush and come to rest against a Knobthorn Tree… We passed the Zambezi Sun Hotel, and came up to the entrance gate to the parking area of the falls… Allan told the guard that he was a tour operator, taking his client to see the falls, and the guard put down his receipt book and waved us in without asking for payment… By now I was used to his smooth-talking and didn’t bat an eyelid…

We spent some time trying to convince the staff at the office that we were here to take a Mokoro over the falls… They flatly refused to let us in, until we told them we were only joking… We walked down to the first viewing point, the Eastern Cataract, and were properly impressed with our first sight of these magnificent falls…. Allan said they easily compared to the Iguassu Falls in South America, the highest falls in the world….

Our first look at one of the “Seven Natural Wonders of the World…”

Allan had brought a raincoat, and began putting his camera gear into a water-proof bag… I was not keen to get my clothes wet again, as I had been bitching about getting into wet clothes every day for the last week or so… We had also left our wallets locked in our panniers on the bikes, and had no money on us to hire the ponchos and umbrellas available to tourists…

Allan had meanwhile begun walking down the path towards the next viewpoint, and I started walking back to the parking area… I had visited the falls on a few occasions in the past, so wasn’t too perturbed about not seeing the “Full Monty” again… I was halfway to the gate when Allan came running up the path, looking like a drowned rat, shouting, “Dude!! Fuck getting wet, you have to see this!!”

The look of wonderment and awe on his face changed my mind instantly, and I turned back, wanting to share the experience with him…. I negotiated with the guy hiring the ponchos, and he agreed to let me use one and pay later… Allan and I walked down the path into a strong drizzle of water coming from the falls… We were amazed at how at the smallest change in wind direction, we were either bone dry, or completely soaked…

Allan just before the Knife Edge Bridge that crosses the Batoka Gorge….

We walked all the along the front of the falls, trying to take pictures and keep our cameras dry. No easy task…!! We worked out a system where I held the camera under my poncho, while Allan lifted it up in the front…I then ducked my head through the hole and peeped at the digital screen and snapped off a few shots…. Load guffaws of laughter came from the other tourists watching us, and at one stage Allan encouraged them to, “come take a look under here…this guy’s hung like a horse…” which made some of them laugh even more, and others scurry away in alarm, pushing their children in front of them and muttering something about “dirty old men”…

We were like a couple of kids, messing about in the rain, jumping into deep puddles of water which covered the path in places. My sneakers and jeans were sopping wet, but I didn’t care… We were having too much fun….. I was proud of the fact that Allan was so captivated by the sight, that here was something special enough to amaze this guy who had already travelled half the world, seeing places and things that few others were ever likely to witness… It almost felt as these were “my” falls, and I was showing them off to Allan…

Wet, wild and woolly as the “rain” pours over me, Victoria Falls, Zambia

“I’m freaking wet, Dude!!”

We clambered down ever path we could find, alternating between brilliant sunshine one minute and pouring rain the next, but we didn’t care, we were kids again, laughing, shouting… and messing with every tourist we came across…. “Did you see the Guy go over?” Allan asked every group he saw…. And, “No swimming, you hear!!”, and, “Morning, Ma’am, nice weather we’re having…” while standing in the full spray from the falls…. To one particular wet woman, “I like your hair like that…”…her husband wasn’t amused, but they were German, and as is usual for Germans, had lost their sense of humour as soon as they reached puberty…

“If we jump in here Allan, we could get to Mozambique by next Thursday…”

We walked back along the Eastern Cataract, above the falls, where we sat on some rocks at the Zambezi’s edge and watched the water drop out of sight…. We hardly spoke a word, lost in the wonderment of it all…letting our clothes dry in the hot sun…. I broke our reverie by shouting “Allah Akbaar!!” at the top of my voice, which in Arabic means, “God is great!”… When I translated for Allan, he looked at me and said, “Holy shit!!! Are you with those Al Qaeda fuckers, then?”… We laughed till we cried, and then went back to our bikes and headed for the gate…

Just around the corner was the bridge linking Zambia to Zimbabwe… The view from there is spectacular and I remembered it from the last time I was here, when Vanessa and I took the plunge, and “jumped off this perfectly good bridge”…

We rode back up towards the entrance to the falls, where we were stopped by a Traffic Officer on a Honda Gold Wing, who was amazed at where we had been and where we were going… We chatted about the difficulty he had in getting spare parts and tyres for his bike and how often his machine stood for long periods while they waited for these precious items to be sent from South Africa…

Allan then asked him what the Zambian authorities were doing about the condition of the roads… Here we go, I thought to myself… The officer looked at Allan, and then burst out laughing… “Send us more Aid money and maybe we will fix the roads for our American tourists…” he replied… I burst into spontaneous applause and agreed with the officer, just to get Allan miffed… I knew his feelings about “Aid for Africa”, as we had discussed the complete waste of Aid money at length… Before Allan could begin a debate on this subject, I swung into my saddle and started the engine… Allan knew by now that this was my signal to cut the crap and mount up…

Allan gets friendly with the local constabulary….

On the way back to Livingstone, we stopped at the local Super-Spar so that Allan could buy some wine… Today was potentially our last day together, and Allan was determined to see me off in style…. “We’ll get hammered and then cause crap at the Jolly Jackers…”, he said… He had started calling the Jollyboys Backpackers by this name the day before, much to the annoyance of the staff… We had been quite well-behaved up until then, (except for switching many of the price tags on the stuff in the Jungle Drums Shop…) and I could see that Allan was determined to change all that….

Zambia was playing a match in the CAF Cup tournament that night, and the bar was crowded with locals watching the game… Allan, who does not like the game of football at all, started making cracks after a Zambian headed in a goal to make the score 2–0 . “Why don’t they get two points for a headed goal,” he shouted…. Scowls from the watching crowd had no effect on him whatsoever…. He continued to suggest changes to the rules for the rest of the game, and eventually he won a few guys over to his way of thinking, and they got into the spirit of the conversation, making suggestions of their own… Allan asked for a piece of paper to write down some of them, so that he could pen “a letter to FIFA” the next morning… I was amazed at the lengths he would go to in order to try and convince people he was serious…

It all went pear-shaped from there, and we eventually staggered into our room, scrambled under our mosquito nets and fell asleep… Allan mumbled something about the Victoria Falls, but before I could reply, his load snoring began shaking the thatch above us…..

Another amazing day in Africa had come to an end…

These folk had arrived earlier that day…they had left Germany in July 2007, and were on their way to Cape Town…

© 2008 TBMH